Popular Australian cricket player Simon O’Donnell

Simon O’Donnell is a multi-talented former Australian cricketer who gave up a very promising career in the football arena to enhance his cricket playing expertise. He then continued to become an integral part of the Australian One-Day team. Being in the middle-lower order, he is still recognized as a player who made some surprisingly fiery innings.

Amongst his scale of accomplishments are a half century achieved with only 18 balls in 1990 against Sri Lanka which retained the position of fastest 50 scored in ODIs for almost six years. Given the credit to O’Donnell’s fast-medium bowling, it has always benefitted Australia’s One Day victories which was evident when he won the title of ‘Australia’s most economical bowler’. Unfortunately, O’Donnell, a remarkable right-hand batsman and right-arm fast medium bowler, was diagnosed with cancer when the tournament ended, nonetheless, he returned to ODIs in the season of 1988-99. He sustained a superb strike rate of 80.96 runs per 100 balls during the ODIs which was double the rate in the test innings.

Today, Simon O’Donnell is a member of the Nine Network’s commentary team and also hosts regularly in The Cricket show. He also manages horse races by his company ‘O’Donnell Thoroughbreds International’.